


Emmanuel nascetur pro te Israel

by ithilielthechosenone



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Sweater Weather- Lumosinlove
Genre: Christmas, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, and a teeny bit of, coops, sweater weather discord secret santa
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:41:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28293255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ithilielthechosenone/pseuds/ithilielthechosenone
Summary: Let us jump this hurdle, let us be in love in the Friday evening sun, let us face the future and all we have yet to see, it’s worth a try, a hundred thousand tries with you by my side.-Sirius and Remus and a few moments throughout winter.
Relationships: Sirius Black/Remus Lupin
Comments: 2
Kudos: 21





	Emmanuel nascetur pro te Israel

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Infinitivelove](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Infinitivelove/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Sweater Weather](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20750912) by [lumosinlove](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lumosinlove/pseuds/lumosinlove). 



> This was written for the sw/c2c discord's secret santa organised by our dearest captain. I had the honour of creating this little thing for the wonderful @Infinitivelove. Thank you, Hazel or @lumosinlove, as ever for spinning this beautiful universe to life, giving us these characters and versions of these characters, and letting us play with them. Happiest of holidays, everyone<3

The hill looks much less steep from down below. Sirius still feels a little out of breath from climbing it as fast as they did. “Cardio,” Remus had singsonged and his flushed smile had been worth the sweat now clinging to the back of Sirius’s neck. “We’re professional athletes,” he says as Remus drops his backpack and steps forward to stand beside him. “How are we so bad at this?” Remus laughs. “It’s vastly different exercise from what we normally do. That’s probably why we’re a bit winded.” Sirius shrugs and turns to look at the view before them. They can only see the outskirts of the city. If he strains his eyes he can make out the restaurant on the corner of Dumo’s street. “Huh,” he says. “I didn’t know you could see so much from up here. It’s not that high up.” “I told you it would be worth it.” He can hear the smile in Remus’s voice, can see it without looking. A miraculous gift, so clear in his mind.

“There,” Remus calls suddenly and points out towards what Sirius believes might be northeast. He has never been particularly good at geography. “Our house.” Remus continues and Sirius tries to follow the line of his gaze. All he sees are street lights and houses that look vaguely big and expensive. “Ah,” he says instead, “That’s so nice.”

Remus looks at him. “You don’t see it, do you.” Sirius raises his eyebrows and tilts his head to the side. “I do!” He insists but he breaks off laughing at Remus’s sigh. “Can you see the restaurant close to Dumo’s?” He asks and steps closer until their shoulders are touching. It has grown slightly colder with the sun long gone and Sirius is glad he brought an extra jacket. Sirius nods. “Follow that street to the left. Do you see the fire station?”

“Oh, _that’s_ where we are. I was looking to the right.”

“Yeah. We left the kitchen light on again.”

“We’re terrible terrible people.” Sirius wraps and arm around Remus’s waist and pulls him in a little closer.

The lights below them seem almost chaotic in their wide reach, their flashing brightness. To stand here with Remus, just far enough above them, untouched by it all feels like a gift in its own right. He wants Remus in the white light of the stadium, the sun at dawn in their bedroom, the candles in their living room or the darkness of a lonely hill just outside of the city. It makes him breathless sometimes, the thought of it. Remus in a hundred different lights, a thousand shades of darkness and all of them combining to make up the light of their lives, joined like the two ends of a shoelace. His wilder thoughts have always loved illusive metaphors.

“I’ll hang a sign up in the garage that reminds us to turn it off.”  
“We’ll still forget.”  
“It’s worth a try, isn’t it?”

“It is.” With Remus, it always is. Let us wear our hearts on our sleeves, knees touching at the kitchen table, it is worth a try. Let us jump this hurdle, let us be in love in the Friday evening sun, let us face the future and all we have yet to see, it’s worth a try, a hundred thousand tries with you by my side. The air we breathe, the space we share, a kiss on the cheek when he sits down on the bench after his shift, the taste of Remus’s laugh.

He moves his arm from around Remus’s waist to take his hand instead. The skin is rough and split in places from the cold. “You know we have at least three tubes of hand cream lying around the house,” he says, voice quiet in the soft shadows surrounding them. Remus punches his shoulder but there is no bite to it and he is smiling again.

“I bring you to magical unknown places and all you can do is focus on the imperfections of my hand. I am wounded.”

“Your hand is perfect, you are perfect. But it’s also _bleeding_ Remus, Jeez.”

“Go and look at the lights, you big sappy bag of absolute wonder.”

Sirius laughs and presses a kiss to Remus’s hair.

“C’est moi, le capitaine,” he protests just for the sake of it. He can almost _feel_ Remus roll his eyes at that.

“Je t’aime, mon loup,” he adds.

“Moi aussi. Now watch the sky with me.”

The air tastes of blossoming winter and hope. He kisses Remus’s hand once, just above where his ring rests, more than a promise, a silent confession that has become as natural as the way his eyes blink open in the morning. Their hands still entwined, shoulder to shoulder, they are stars.

* * *

Sometimes the demure edges of his thoughts have claws as sharp as knives. They leave his every mistake, demerit, and slightest failure open for him to see. The realization of all that he has done wrong, should have done better and will never do right because he never could. He is too slow at practice one day, too tired from watching a movie last night when they couldn’t sleep and had instead sat on the couch together until early morning, he drives across a red light, he accidentally reads a rather rudely worded comment in a newspaper, it is his mother’s birthday and all in all Sirius is very very done with the world today.

Remus is drying up the last of the dishes and he knows he should move and help him but he feels bone tired with an especially unpleasant kind of exhaustion. Remus has been more quiet today. Instead of their usual kitchen chatter, heavy silence fills the room instead. The logical part of Sirius’s thought processes knows exactly that this kind of situation is not his fault. Just last week, Remus started crying after dropping a glass and seeing it shatter on the floor. He would never think twice about blaming Remus for it.

It is what it is, however, and thus, Sirius feels more than a little bit off balance. He half wants to tell Remus so that he can hear him reassure him. It seems a bit selfish but if he is honest with himself, that’s all he really wants at this moment. Remus puts down the last of their plates, now dry and looks at Sirius instead of reaching up to properly store it in the cupboard. “Baby, don’t feel like you have to tell me but something is going on with you, isn’t there? Are you alright? Would you like to talk about it?”

He should have known better than trying to fool Remus. He shrugs and smiles a little shakily. “I- I’m not doing that great.” The pressure that felt like it was building behind his skull seems to lift slightly with the admission. Perhaps he can do this. Remus dries his hands and takes a step closer, not yet invading Sirius’s space, carefully looking up at him. He doesn’t want Remus to have to be unsure about this.

“I just feel…” He _can_ do this. “Guilty. Like I’m not enough. And I can’t really stop it, no matter what I tell myself.” Remus’s eyes go a bit wide before they soften. “Do you want a distraction? Or would you like to talk more about it, love?” Bless him, Sirius thinks, a bit weakly. “Can you… can _you_ maybe talk?”

„Sirius,“ Remus says and takes his hand. „You’re good and you’re so so kind and you deserve the world.“ Sirius feels strangely like he might cry. He doesn’t fight it, not with Remus. „Oh, baby.“ Remus moves to wrap his arms around him, rubbing soothing circles on the back of Sirius’s neck. He blinks and a few tears fall onto his sweater, Gryffindor red and a gift for his first game day. There is a moment of guilt but it is as short-lived as his nervousness when stepping onto the ice, a gut reaction, a former fear become a habit now. It is gone after the first step and forgotten until he feels it again.

“I can’t change what you’ve been taught and if I’m being honest I can’t change what you are thinking either but let me be the voice of logic here,” Remus continues and Sirius can feel the words breathed into his neck. “You are wonderful and brilliant and if you ever forget that, I’m always here to remind you. I love you, your friends love you, Regulus loves you in his sticky sandwich way and everyone else who matters loves and adores you so much sometimes it’s a bit surreal.”

“I know,” he says, breathing a little shakily but he doesn’t think he wants to cry anymore. Here it is then. “I know. And… fuck, I feel like… I _should_ know. I shouldn’t care. But I do and I can’t see a way to change that. I need-“ he stops himself for a moment to gather his thoughts. Remus raises his head to look up at him with soft eyes. He loves him. He loves him and he _wants_ to say all this. “Tell me what you need, baby.”

“I need you to tell me. Sometimes I _can’t_ stand above all of it and then I need you to say it. It sounds so stupid and you already do it without me having to ask but Re, I just- It’s a lot up in there,” he gestures towards his own head with a smile that Remus returns easily. “I thought you should know that. You’re doing what I need without me asking for it but … I wanted to ask for it. I don’t want you to have to keep guessing.” Remus steps back a

little but keeps their fingers intertwined, his thumb across his knuckles “I love you. Thank you for telling me, it means more than I can tell you. It’s hard for me, too, sometimes, not knowing what to do when all I want is to make you feel better.”

“What did I do to deserve you?” Sirius asks, only half joking. Remus raises Sirius’s hand in his and kisses his palm, so softly, so reverently that Sirius lets out a small breath. “Everything,” Remus answers. “You deserve everything. You’re so good and I love you so much. Every day I thank whatever God may be watching over me for giving me the privilege of knowing you.”

The room is bright with the setting sun streaming through the windows. It paints their kitchen in hues of red and orange, breaks through the vases on the dinner table so that the flowers Remus had brought in from the Christmas market on Wednesday shift from white to a pale yellow. It feels warm on his face, even in the middle of December. There are a few stray freckles still visible on the high of Remus’s cheeks in the light like this.

“I love you. Thank you.”

“You never need to thank me for saying the truth, Sirius.”

Remus’s hair looks golden in the fading sunset. A honeyed halo around his head. He is a revelation of the loveliest kind. On his tongue the words sound like the indisputable truth. Sirius believes him.

He remembers _before_. The fortress, the unmovable wall and there, the eye of the needle. Regrets and regrets, sometimes he used to feel like that was all he was made out of. _Mon regret, my deepest shame, make me different, make me normal, make it not be true. My promise and hope, my very own Immanuel. Remus, Remus, Remus. There is no regret in my present._

* * *

“You drive.” Remus throws his scarf, dark red and gold of course, at him and bends down to tie his shoes. Sirius is still looking at him a little puzzled. “You want to go swimming?”

“Ye-es,” Remus sing-songs.

“In the middle of winter.”

“Yup.”

“Why?”

Remus purses his lips and then clicks his tongue, Sirius isn’t quite sure that qualifies as an answer. “I want to go swimming with my fiancé and kiss you underwater, is that really so unbelievable?”

“That doesn’t sound too bad, no. You sure, you want to go out with a famous degenerate like me? I might steal you away.” Sirius takes his keys from the bowl by their door and steps into his boots. A soft tap on his arm makes him turn towards Remus already fully dressed, a few stray curls peaking out from under his hat. He has come to understand, over the time they have known each other, the violent ardor with which a smile can be treasured. He knows the feel of it against his own skin, the way it wraps around the scar across Remus’s upper lip. He has seen a hundred thousand of them and he knows in the deepest, most hidden marrow of his bones that he will never tire of it.

“The only thing degenerate about you is your genetic code,” Remus says and Sirius groans when he starts to laugh at his own joke. “How long have you been waiting to use that one?” Remus is laughing fully now. “I don’t even know what that means,” Sirius tries to protest as Remus’s joy spurs the both of them into a fit of laughter. It echoes in their hallway, the sound “Forever after all” is made out of, the dream of besotted poets and lovesick musicians.

The water is warm. Through the slight steam curling around the windows like a silvery curtain, the snow seems less blinding but no less cold, a stark contrast of sensation. Sirius opens his eyes underneath the surface to face Remus in the water next to him. Their hands reach for each other, their eyes meet in this strangely swirling half-reality. He has seen pictures of children dancing like this, the unbridled joy he used to only recognize from books and brightly colored illustrations. _Nothing can hurt us here, the two of us and our joint hands and smiles and lives as long as we look at each other, keep looking at each other._

They break the surface, gasping for air, eyes slowly blinking away the water dripping down from their hair. He wants to kiss the drops away from Remus’s lips and so he does. The laugh once half-forbidden, the diamond-wrought chain around his hands broken long ago. In snowfall, spring, and freezing waters, here they are, here they will be. It is easier to stitch the wound with your eyes wide open, to take the challenge while facing your enemy. It courses through him like a song long thought forgotten: _So much can hurt us here, for everyone to see and think and hear like this, but we will break the arrow, turn the dagger’s edge. Some I may shield you from and throw back inferno, some you will catch in the air before they reach me, some we can ward off ourselves and so many will we turn away from together._

_Look at me, here, with you and all the words we never needed to say. There is danger past your eyes, a storm beyond our touches but we have built this lighthouse atop the highest mountain. Its light shines on our backs or in our faces or onto the life we have made. With you I can be unafraid. With you I can breathe even in darkness._

* * *

They take pictures under the Christmas tree, fifteen of them. One with Sirius’s arms around Remus’s shoulders, a selfie with all four of them, Lyall and Jules with matching Christmas hats, the flush of happiness on the high of Remus’s cheekbones as he stands there with a piece of wrapping paper glued to his sweater, Sirius’s laugh as he tries and fails to take it off, a kiss on the nose, one on the lips and Julian in various states of ecstasy at receiving his gifts.

On the last day of Christmas my true love gave to me: _four letters down, a place of comfort, of safety; h-o-m-e._ An _I’ll love you in a hundred universes and a thousand different shapes of Eden. For a million lifetimes, and the surety of your beating heart next to mine every night. Joyeux noël, mon coeur, mon étoile le plus cher, mon tendre amour and all the words you say that I will never pronounce correctly._

“Everything about you is like gold,” he tells Remus that night, lying atop the sheets on their bed while he watches him pull his socks off and throw them onto the carpet. “No wonder you’re a Lion.” Remus raises an eyebrow at him that would most certainly have been followed by some form of protest. “With all the time I spend looking at you, I should know.” Remus laughs at that and finally moves under the covers, waiting until Sirius has done the same before turning off the light on his bedside table.

“Well then,” he says and his hand finds Sirius’s cheek in the darkness. “We match pretty well, don’t you think?”

“What? Because I’m all dark and gloomy?” Sirius asks jokingly.He hears the rustling of the sheets as Remus moves before his free hand settles on Sirius’s arm. “No. Because your heart is gold.” Sirius laughs.

“Alright, alright mister romantic. That was so sweet, I’m not even going to fight you about it.”

“You better not. I’m harder to fight than I look."

“Are you now?”

“Mmmh. They underestimate me based on my size. And then they’re unprepared. Their problem.”

“Good thing I’d never underestimate you.” Remus kisses him in the darkness of their bedroom, honey-sweet and sun-bright for the way he laughs into it. “Sleep, sweetheart. Regulus will be here early tomorrow.” Sirius says quietly and touches his cheek before Remus rolls off of him to lie down.

“Is he bringing Dima so that you can make a fool of yourself in Russian again?” he asks.

Sirius nods and sighs a little. “It is _not_ my fault that neither Kuny _nor_ Sergei can be trusted. I thought they were teaching me to say ‘Good to have you here’ not ‘You look like a frog’.”

“I still don’t know how they came up with that,” Remus says and yawns, stretching out a little and turning to the side, facing Sirius’s profile. He presses another kiss to his jaw. “You can tell him again tomorrow. Now merry Christmas, baby. Good night.”

Tomorrow Remus will force them all to listen to European Christmas carols until they have started to _think_ in the notes of a strangely somber and very German Silent Night or his least favorite rendition of Il est né le divin enfant. Sirius will suffer through them all with only the mildest of complaints. The holiday of love or something, he will tell himself, because Remus will sing along to all of them and it will be so utterly, dearly wonderful that he will forget he wanted to complain in the first place.

They will sit and laugh and silently wish for some good old Jingle Bells until Dima joins in on Remus’s singing as soon as the first Russian song comes up. Regulus will look at him with satisfied exasperation, there will be glitter in all of their hair and some on Remus’s cheeks and neck from when Sirius will have kissed him after dinner. The stars are brightly shining, the candles are lit and Sirius will suddenly feel brighter than all of them.

_You saw it. You saw and all you did was breathe it to life. You took what spark I had left in me and made it fuller, warmer for me to see. A burn to last through every burst of wonderful potential we carry in us and between us. With you cradling it like this, it will never go out. With you holding me like this, I will never want it to._


End file.
